


Circular Reasoning

by clarityhiding



Series: Living Our Best Deaths [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Case Fic, Dark Magic, Dead Tim Drake, Gen, Jason Todd is Robin, JayTim Spooktober 2020, Necromancy, Pre-Slash, Tim Drake is a Ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarityhiding/pseuds/clarityhiding
Summary: Becoming a police psychic to help solve Tim's murder made sense at the time. Still, Jason may not have thought through all the long-term consequences.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Living Our Best Deaths [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1531910
Comments: 5
Kudos: 99
Collections: JayTimWeek





	Circular Reasoning

**Author's Note:**

> For weekend 4 of JayTim Spooktober: Ghosts, it's another installment of my Living Our Best Deaths series. Many thanks to chibi_nightowl who continues to be my biggest cheerleader (and best beta!) for these fun boy detectives. \o/

"I'm sorry to have you come in so late, and on a school night. I'm sure you have other responsibilities you should be seeing to," Commissioner Gordon says after greetings have been exchanged. He takes Jason's arm and guides him from the lobby of Central and into the warren of rooms that lies beyond it.

"Naw, I'm good. Finished all my homework already or else I wouldn't've come," Jason reassures him. It's part of the dance where they both pretend that Gordon has no idea what-all he and Bruce get up to most nights.

"I still don't get why we have to do this instead of going out with Batman," Tim grumbles, walking along beside them. He nimbly dodges out of the way when an officer rushes past, but still has a moment where an arm goes through his translucent torso.

Jason winces. He knows how much Tim hates it when that sort of thing happens.

"I would have had you come on the weekend, but I'm not so old that I don't remember how much a boy your age values his free days," Gordon continues, blithely unaware of the fact that one of his guests has been unintentionally assaulted. Sort of.

"Very important for those of us with busy social lives," Jason agrees, and for once it's not entirely a lie. He isn't sure how he feels about Superboy and Impulse yet, but he's thinking they might be something like friends by now, weird as that idea feels. He's even warming up to the girls, though he's not entirely sure about the new Wonder Girl yet, and not just because he misses Donna.

Gordon harrumphs, like he's well aware of Jason's far-from-average weekend plans, then shakes his head, apparently deciding it's just not worth pursuing that line of small talk. "Right. Well, your coming now at least lets me leave you with a familiar face," he says, rounding a corner and guiding Jason through a door and into a noisy room.

"Just a second" Jason shakes free from Gordon's loose grip and catches the still-swinging door, holding it open.

"Thanks." Tim beams at him as he darts in to join them. He can pass through solid objects fine, but Jason knows he hates doing it if he doesn't have to, would much rather pretend he's just as alive as everyone else.

"Ah," Gordon says, his bushy eyebrows going high. "I take it your little shadow came with you?"

"He's my partner, not my shadow," Jason reminds him. "And of course he came—what good am I as a spirit medium if the spirit I communicate with best isn't here also?"

"A spirit medium? Boss, what kind of hokum have you got us mixed up with now?" a strange, loud voice asks. 

Jason turns to watch as a large man in a beat-up fedora swaggers over to join them. A woman trails behind him and he starts in recognition.

"Hey, I know you! Officer Montoya, right? You helped with Tim's case, before it moved out of Gotham and the Feds got involved." Jason grins and steps forward, offering her his hand. "Thanks for everything you did on that. We both really appreciated it."

"It's Detective Montoya now," she says as she smiles back and shakes his hand. "I should have realized the commissioner was talking about you when he mentioned bringing in someone from outside to help slog through these cold cases."

Gordon clears his throat and Jason guiltily jumps back. "Detective Bullock, Detective Montoya—Jason Todd will be working with you to help clear some of the backlog of cases that fell to the side in recent years."

It's a roundabout way of saying 'during the brief time when that idiot Atkins was in charge and corruption ran rampant in the GCPD,' but Jason guesses office politics demands that Gordon at least attempt to sound diplomatic and unbiased.

"Wait, I know you—aren't you Wayne's kid? The one who died and came back last year?" the large man—Bullock, Jason supposes—says.

Jason winces, but it's not like he can deny it. His death was apparently big news, and while Bruce tried to keep the media away during his recovery last fall, it's still not every day that a resurrection happens. "Yeah, that's me. Died, came back, still have enough of a connection to the other side that I can see and talk to ghosts. Though, to be honest, I haven't had much to do with any of them other than Tim."

At mention of his name, Tim leans in and—with a look of absolute delight on his face—slips his arm into the man's and reaches up to tweak his nose. "Let's see who he calls hokum _now_."

"I should probably mention," Jason says, grinning with perhaps a little more glee than is strictly warranted at Bullock's startled look. "Me and Tim are strictly a package deal. He's the one who sees the stuff, and I'm the one who sees him. It's generally a good idea not to piss him off, since he likes to pinch."

"I like him already," Montoya says. "Thanks, Commissioner. I think Harvey and I can handle it from here."

"Just remember to be careful with that one," Gordon says nodding towards Jason. "He's still a minor, and his guardian isn't someone you want to get on the bad side of."

Bullock snorts. "What, Brucie Wayne? What's he gonna do, run us down on one of those polo ponies he keeps falling off of?"

"Worse," Jason assures him. "He'd make you listen to stories about Dickie. _Everyone_ gets secondhand embarrassment from those."

* * *

"Looking at boxes of old junk is _boring_. Finding clues is way more fun when we do it with Batman," Tim grumbles some time later. They're deep in Evidence Lock-up, waiting for Montoya to come back with yet another box of stuff for them to look over. Bullock disappeared a while ago for a smoke break, but he's starting to suspect the guy doesn't plan on coming back.

"Yeah, well. We can't exactly tell people what you find then, can we? Not without tampering with the crime scene or revealing stuff that shouldn't be revealed," Jason says.

Tim supposes he has a point—since the GCPD already has Jason Todd on record as a psychic, they probably don't want to introduce anyone to the idea that Robin might be one too. "Just. This kind of thing is a lot easier in the place where the person died. I can see the echoes of what happened or will happen then. This is just… feelings."

"Feelings can be useful too," Jason reminds him, stepping aside so Montoya can set the box she's carrying down on the table.

Detective Montoya removes the lid and tilts it forward so they can see in. It's a bunch of nothing like all the other boxes have been so far. Dull bagged shell casings, bullets, bits of fluff, and—

"What's that?" Tim darts forward, and, like so often happens when he gets excited, his hand passes through the box and its contents as he once again forgets he can't really interact with anything.

"What's what?" Jason leans in, trying to see what Tim is reaching for. "Move out of the way, I can't see."

"Sorry?" Montoya sounds confused but gamely leans back.

"Not you—Tim. Something in the box caught his eye. Can you dump everything on the table? Then he can point it out."

"She doesn't have to do that," Tim protests.

Jason waves him off, because it really does make a lot more sense to have everything spread out rather than play a frustrating version of Twenty Questions as Tim tries to describe exactly what it is he's interested in.

There are a lot of bags in the box, but between himself and Montoya, it doesn't take long to spread everything out on the table they've been using. Glancing over it all, Jason's vision doubles for a brief moment—gunsmoke stings his nostrils, squealing brakes echo in his head, and he shivers, suddenly feeling much colder than the climate-controlled room warrants.

Then it's gone and it's just a table of scattered bits and bobs. Things that might be clues or red herrings or nothing at all.

"This is it," Tim says. He leans into Jason's field of view, gently nudging a bag containing a few broken pieces of plastic. "Can she take it out?"

Across the table, Montoya stiffens. It must look particularly strange to her, seeing the bag apparently move all on its own. "Was that…?"

"Tim? Yeah. He wants you to take the stuff out of the bag. I think he'll get more off it then."

"Kid can't open a bag?" Bullock gripes, finally returning from his break, but Montoya pulls on a pair of gloves and carefully takes the shards out.

Tim leans in, completely focused on the bits of plastic if the way his feet lift off the floor is anything to go by. "I think… I think someone was killed by this."

"What, you get that from some plastic but not from all the bullets and stuff we've already looked at?" Jason grumbles.

"What's he saying?" Montoya asks.

"He says those bits of plastic were a murder weapon."

"What?" She glances around, grabs the laptop she's been using and starts scrolling through files. "This box is supposed to be evidence from multiple homicide. Uh… Here it is—shootout in a Diamond District hotel a few years back, everyone figured it to be mob related, but no one could dig up anything to point to any particular family."

"So if it was a shootout, what's with the plastic?" Jason leans in, trying to see the screen before she turns it away.

"I'm not sure…" She glances back at the bag the plastic came from, typing something on the computer. "Ah. That's evidence from a hit-and-run that occurred outside the hotel around the same time. Bits of a broken headlight that some idiot misfiled."

"That could be why I get a stronger read on these," Tim says. "Bullets are a bit more… impersonal? I think the copper in the brass casing resists holding onto residual spiritual energy. A car hitting someone is something big—it _slams_ into the person, then it might run over them after. The contact-to-inertia ratio is longer."

Jason nods. They're both learning as they go when it comes to Tim's weird connection to death and dying. "Maybe they thought the hit-and-run was related to the shootings?" he suggests to the detectives. "Could be there was someone who ran away after, and they hit the person when they were getting out of there."

"Could be," Bullock allows. "Doesn't help any when all we've got are some bits of headlight, though."

" _That_ I can help with, probably," Tim says, settling back on his feet and grinning up at Jason, wide and infectious. "Find out where it happened?"

"Tim wants to know where all this went down. The hit-and-run and everything."

"Rucka and Ohio, in the drive right in front of the Gotham Mandarin Oriental," Montoya tells them. "But it was years ago, there's not going to be anything left after all this time."

"Maybe not physically," Jason allows, watching as Tim shoots upwards, no doubt on his way out into the city. "But psychically? Stuff tends to linger a lot longer."

* * *

Tim generally avoids going _through_ things when he can help it, but he figures it's better to get stuff done quickly rather than wait for Jason to hold open all the doors between the evidence lock-up and the building's entrance for him.

He tells himself that's the reason he's in such a hurry to leave, that it definitely has nothing at all to do with the weird, crimson aura that lingered around the pieces of headlight. Nothing to do with the uncomfortably familiar itch he felt when he let his fingers brush against that reddish glow. It might even be mostly true.

He learned basic rooftop navigation of Gotham back when he was still alive and following Batman and Robin around the city. His knowledge has only improved since his death, though he generally keeps to a lower level than he's at now, traveling along beside Robin and Batman as they swing from building to building. But sometimes he flies like this, far enough above everything that the buildings blur into grey blocks sectioned by strips of dark roadwork. High enough that Gotham looks almost exactly like the maps made to represent it, but not so high that he forgets exactly what kind of city it is.

It doesn't take much time at all to cover the short distance between Central and the address Detective Montoya gave. Just a minute or two, and then Tim is watching windows flash by as he carefully lowers himself back down to street level.

He wasn't exactly lying when he told Jason that he didn't get much from the bullets. Sure, there was a lingering touch of death and malevolence clinging to them, but without a body or a crime scene to place them in, he couldn't get anything beyond that. The broken headlight, though… _Something_ rammed death into that headlight, sinking it in deep, shoving it between the atoms of plastic to such a degree that it can never be separated again. 

From what he's seen, following Batman and Robin around these last few months, only the most vicious and personal of murders leaves that kind of taint on an object. It's not something that would happen in an accidental death.

The pavement Tim lands on is actually more of a driveway than a street, one of those long, curving ones that allow people to drive right up to the door of a swanky establishment—in this case, the hotel—drop off their things, then let someone else drive the car away. It's not the sort of thing you normally see in Gotham, where space can be at a premium, which tells Tim this is an older building, one that went up early in the city's history, before everyone started scrabbling for bits and pieces of the island.

The drive is a half-circle, each end connecting with the street. But it has another curved access road branching off from it, one that circles back around both sides of the building to a parking lot or underground garage at the rear. Something twists in Tim's non-existent gut as he notices this, but he isn't sure what. An inkling of familiarity, maybe? Like this is vaguely similar to something he's seen before, though he can't think of what.

He shakes off his uneasiness and quickly moves to the tip of the arching drive, where the hotel's lavish entryway opens out into the night, bright lights and gaudily dressed people spilling everywhere.

Jason and the detectives are waiting for him back at Central. He can't let niggling feelings distract him, not when he has a murder to help solve.

Ignoring the people and present-day vehicles, Tim hovers just above the pavement, letting his vision go unfocused and his mind wander. It's not unlike what he did during those long months he spent in the basement of the Drake house, only half-aware of the world around him and even less caring of the tricky thing that is time.

The world goes blurry, losing color and sound. Around him, buildings soar, impossibly tall and in odd shapes more akin to Metropolis than Gotham. Wheeless cars whiz past in the air overhead, and noise returns, getting louder and louder as unhinged laughter echoes off the looming skyscrapers.

Tim squeezes his eyes shut and slaps his hands over his ears. This isn't when he wants to see, not yet, not like this. Never, if he can help it.

He takes a few steadying, useless breaths, then slowly opens his eyes.

This time, there are no futuristic buildings or flying cars. There's a bang, somewhere in the distance, followed by several more, with screaming, crying, shouting all mixed in among them. Then—silence.

A man bursts out of double doors of the hotel, looking frantic and half-mad. His eyes fix on another man, this one only a handful of feet away from Tim and just climbing out of a dark blue sedan. For one brief moment, the two men seem to recognize one another.

Then the frantic man is dashing forward, shoving the second man out of the way and climbing into the car, peeling away. Tim thinks that's it, and he's about to leave, when the car comes circling back, _ramming_ into the man who is only just regaining his feet, deliberately driving over his prone body, reversing, and driving over it again. Something tinkles against the pavement as the car comes out of reverse, broken bits of ghostly headlight bouncing off of the curb as they're knocked loose by the bumpy ride.

He is so busy staring at the ethereal pieces of plastic that he almost misses the shimmer when the car finally turns off the drive and onto the street, disappearing back into history.

The shimmer… It could just be indicating the outer limit of the flashback he just witnessed. But he's never seen a shimmer like that when he's done this before. In fact, Tim's only seen a shimmer like that under very specific circumstances and even then, he's only seen it twice before.

Stomach sinking, he carefully walks away from the fast-fading memory of a murder and to the edge of the drive, following the circular curb as it curves around the building. It's been years, and things fade with time. But the dead don't really exist in the same time as the living, needn't follow time at all if they don't feel like it.

Twenty feet along, he finds what he was looking for. A seemingly innocuous bit of graffiti, neatly scratched into the side of the cement curb. Tim doesn't doubt that, should he go looking, he'd find four more such sigils carved, each evenly spaced along the circle. Those that made them never did anything by halves, after all.

* * *

Tim is gone for not-quite twenty minutes, all told. During that time, Montoya and Bullock both try to get Jason to look at more evidence, even though he repeatedly tells them he's not the one who senses things, that he's completely useless without his partner.

He doesn't mention the moment of double-vision he experienced when Montoya first opened the box from the shooting. Jason is pretty sure that had more to do with the fact that dinner was a while ago and he's starting to feel a bit peckish than anything else. He rarely experiences anything supernatural that doesn't involve Tim anymore. It is highly doubtful it could be anything else.

Probably.

He's just about to start a fifth game of solitaire on his phone when Tim tumbles back into the room, this time coming through the door instead of the ceiling.

"Okay, I've got good news and bad news and… weird news, I guess?" Tim says.

"Tim's back," Jason tells the detectives, slipping his phone back in his pocket. "He says he found some stuff out." 

"I can give a description and plate number for the car, but I don't know if that'll do them any good, since I think it belonged to the victim. I can also give a description of the driver, who I _think_ was the shooter, but I don't know how much good that'll be?"

Jason grimaces. He's well aware that Tim, while quite brilliant when it comes to technical things, isn't always the best at describing people. The way he often floats a few inches above the ground makes his estimations of height a bit wonky, and a lot of his descriptions of facial features tend to be along the lines of "sort of square but more frowny."

"Something wrong, kid?" Bullock asks. "Did your little ghost friend get cold feet?"

"Tim says he saw the person who did the hit-and-run, and that he thinks it was someone connected to the shootings, but he's not great at giving physical descriptions of people."

"How could he—? No, wait, I don't want to deal with the headache of you trying to explain," Montoya says, shaking her head. "We couldn't use any description he gave us anyway. It's one thing to use a psychic to help point us towards more evidence like we did with the Drake case, it's another thing to pull whole accusations out of thin air with only a dead person as a witness."

"Yeah, okay," Jason says, nodding. "He said he can give you stuff about the car also, and that might be a bit better? He's pretty sure it belonged to the victim, that the guy got carjacked."

"No, not—I mean, yeah, he did, but I think the killer knew him," Tim says excitedly. "That's the good news—I mean, not _good_ -good news, since it's never good when someone deliberately drives over someone—but it's kinda good? Because they know who the victim is, right? Since they had the body, so they can trace the car from him, and maybe look at his known associates, and—"

"Now he's saying he thinks they knew each other, so you should look into the background of the hit-and-run victim. I guess maybe that could give some clues on who might be responsible for the shootings?"

"Huh. Suppose that's more than we had before," Montoya allows. "Though it's still dependent on the two cases being linked. It could be the carjacker had nothing to do with the shootings, and even if he did, we may not be able to find any evidence to prove it."

"Oh, but I know that," Tim says, all his spastic energy abruptly bleeding away as his face settles into a strange sort of non-expression. "Which family was responsible for the shootings, I mean."

"Tim?" Jason stares at his friend, trying to get a read on him. As a ghost, he never has a lot of color to him, but right now he looks far paler than usual. "You okay?"

"I want." He stops, glancing between the detectives, before his attention at last settles on Montoya. "Do you think she'd mind if I used her hand for a bit? I need to draw something."

"You're not gonna try and draw the driver, are you? 'Cause we both know your art skills are kinda shit," Jason cautions. They learned that the hard way, with Tim trying various times to draw a murderer's face using Bruce's hand. It's never produced anything usable. 

Tim grimaces, but shakes his head. "No, something else."

"Tim wants to borrow your hand to show us something, if that's okay with you," he explains to Montoya when she gives him a curious look. "It'll feel a little weird, but it'll just be your hand and maybe your arm, and he'll leave right after. He'll also leave if you withdraw permission at any point."

"Oh," she says, looking a bit startled. "I didn't realize he needed permission?" She glances over to her partner, no doubt remembering Tim's earlier prank.

"He nearly always asks first," Jason assures her. That one accidental possession of Superman gave Tim a big scare, and most possessions of any degree since then have only happened after they go through this particular song and dance. "Though he doesn't always bother when people call him hokum."

Montoya smiles at Bullock's grumbling and holds out her right hand. "Little wonder. Go right ahead, Tim. I don't mind."

"Thanks," Tim says. He moves to stand slightly behind her, then carefully slips his hand into hers, twiddling the fingers in a little wave. "Huh. She's a lot easier to get into than Bullock—even easier than the commissioner. You think she might be part of the nighttime cape crew?"

"Uh, not that I know of." Jason glances at her, considering. Through trial and error, they've found that Tim has an easier time possessing heroes as long they aren't magic users. 

"Something wrong?" Montoya asks, sparing him a quick glance before returning to boggling at her hand moving without any direction from her. It must look particularly strange for her, not being able to see Tim squeezed in beside her, carefully drawing a strange symbol on one of the scattered pieces of paper.

Jason's stomach twists and he feels sick as he watches the curving lines join together to make a depressingly familiar shape. "I know that," he says instead of answering her, gesturing at the paper. "That glyph. It was—" He swallows down his nausea, trying to force the words out as Tim finishes the last curl and pulls his hand out of hers.

"If GCPD goes looking, they'll find five symbols like that one around the hotel," Tim says softly, wrapping his arms around himself like he's suddenly cold.

"That's… I've seen something like that before," Montoya says slowly. She stretches the fingers of her right hand, absentmindedly massaging muscles with her left.

"Looks Greek," Bullock says dismissively.

"I don't know about that, but there were symbols like that in the basement of the Drake house. Part of that awful circle where—" She swallows down whatever words she was going to say next, instead just shaking her head. "Were they somehow involved in this?"

Jason shakes his head, unsure how to answer, all his attention on Tim. The ghost looks pale and sick and awful, just as dead as he actually is for the first time what feels like forever. Since the federal agents came to the manor with their awful news, at least.

"They… contracted, sometimes. If someone really wanted to make sure a person would die and stay dead, and the circumstances were right, they'd... help things along," Tim whispers. "I don't know how many times they did it, but at least once it was for Anthony Zucco. It was easier for them, I think, when the place was already suited."

Something's twisting in Jason's gut, tight and horrible and awful. He's not the son and protégé of the world's greatest detective for nothing, after all. "Circles," he says, remembering the hotel layouts Montoya showed him earlier while they were waiting for Tim to return. "He's saying that sometimes Jack and Janet were contracted by bad people to commit or at least help with murders. That they'd co-opt existing circles, turn them into magic ones so they could drain the power from the deaths that happened within them. That they worked with Tony Zucco in the past, so there's a good chance he or someone he knew had something to do with these shootings also."

"Zucco's dead," Bullock says, his eyes narrowing. "Scum made a deal and was let out early a few years back. Didn't get more than a couple feet out of Blackgate before someone offed him."

"Yeah, I know," Jason says roughly. He didn't quite understand all that went down at the time, but he learned the details later when he happened to look it up in the cave computer. "You get that, Tim?"

"But…" Tim trails off, looking slightly confused. "Oh. I think I got timelines a little mixed up—for some reason I thought that hadn't happened yet."

"Zucco had ties to the Maronis. Maybe he got the Drakes' names from someone in that family?" Jason suggests before he can stop himself.

"Surprised you know that, kid," Bullock says, squinting at him.

"Oh, well. I grew up 'round Crime Alley before Bruce took me in, y'know," Jason mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Gangs and families pay good money to kids willing to run messages across territory lines. Was just good survival tactics to know the lay of the land." He didn't actually work for any of them, of course—those kids also had a pathetic life expectancy. But he's been learning Tim's tactic of giving non-answers to uncomfortable questions and now seems as good a time as any to practice that.

"There was a whole mess of weird stuff going on with the Maronis and the other families under Falcone a few years back. Wouldn't surprise me if they were messing with black magic also," Montoya says, reaching for the computer. "The shooting victims were mostly connected to the Sullivans. Could be some kind of intra-family feud—that would explain the hit-and-run victim recognizing his killer, also, if he was a late arrival to the meeting."

"Suppose that's more than anyone had on the case before," Bullock grudgingly admits. "Don't know how we're gonna convince anyone of a connection based on a bunch of magic hocus pocus, though."

"Don't be like that, Harvey. We can reinvestigate the crime scene, make a link to the Drakes based on the sigils Tim mentioned—that's not a stretch, since I worked the Drake house. Maybe we'll find something in their financials that will help pinpoint a shot-caller." 

"Sorry we couldn't do more," Jason offers. "We're—I mean, I think we'd do better with something more recent. Not too recent, mind, since it takes a couple months for a spirit to come together enough to talk, usually. But—"

"We'll see what Gordon says," Montoya says, but her eyes are dancing and she's smiling. "I know it doesn't sound like much, but you've definitely been a big help with this. Both of you."

"Thanks, I guess." Jason glances at the other boxes waiting for them, then at Tim. The ghost has been uncharacteristically silent and still looks, for lack of a better metaphor, like death warmed over. "Look, d'you think you'll need us any longer, or can we head out? Just, I've got class at eight tomorrow and it's getting pretty late…"

"Go on, get out of here," Bullock says, waving him away dismissively. "Let the professionals deal with the mess you dumped on us."

"Give us a week or two to see if we can close this," Montoya adds. "Something tells me it'll be a real pleasure working with you, Jason."

"Yeah, sure," Jason says, but he's already pulling out his phone to call Alfred. He's glad he could help, but right now there's Tim to think of. And. And a whole mess of other things.

* * *

Jason's sitting on the front steps of Central, staring down at his phone, when Tim floats over to carefully sit down beside him. "Hey." 

"You said you knew the Drakes had done this because you'd seen them do it before, for Zucco. That it wasn't the first time they'd repurposed an existing circle for their own needs." Jason doesn't look at him as he speaks, still staring down at his phone.

When Tim glances over, he sees there's a picture of Dick on the screen, handsome and smiling. His stomach twists and he thinks his mouth would taste sour, if he could still taste things at all. It was too much to hope for that Jason hadn't made the connection earlier. "Yes," he says. And then, "I'm sorry."

"What for? It's not your fault they were awful, horrible people. You're just as much one of their victims as, as other people," Jason says, his voice quavering slightly. He clenches his hand around his phone, and the screen goes dark. "Did you know? Before you died, did you know that they—that Jack and Janet helped kill the Graysons?"

"I was there," Tim admits.

"Well, yeah. You're everywhen, these days, with that weird time travel thing that you do."

"No, I mean. I mean, I was _there_ , that day at the circus. My—Jack and Janet, they took me. I was so excited, it was the first time we'd ever done anything as a family that didn't also involve their friends." Not the only time, but the first time. And he hadn't realized, at the start, what was going to happen. He didn't know yet, and that means that at least part of the memory is clear and wonderful as viewed through innocent, ignorant eyes.

"They… Jeez, Tim, you couldn't've been more than four or something! And they took you along on a _hit_?" Jason stares at him, looking absolutely appalled.

He shouldn't. He wouldn't, if he knew everything. And Tim _should_ tell him everything so that he can understand. "They flagged down the Graysons and, and talked to them. We had our picture taken with them, they said it would help me understand that the performers were real, regular people. Dick, he… He held me on his knee." And gave him a hug. His only hug, a hug that meant everything, that changed Tim's entire world view.

"That's just sick. Like a cat playing with a mouse before it eats it."

"I guess. I didn't know what was going to happen. Up until they… hit the ground, I still thought it was all part of the show. But then. They didn't get up. And my. And Jack and Janet, they were. Intense." Leaning forward as they clutched his shoulders, slightly manic looks on their faces, a strange tinge of some emotion he couldn't identify at the time when they saw Dick rush to the broken bodies of his parents. "Everything was. Well. Chaotic. A lot of stuff going on at once, we slipped out in the crowd, but. I was a lot closer to the ground than everyone else. And I saw what was written on the edge of the ring on our way out of the tent."

"You saw one of the symbols," Jason says slowly.

"I didn't tell anyone. I should have, but I didn't, and they got away with murder. I was practically an accessory to murder, and I didn't tell anyone, even when I knew what it was, what they did, but I didn't, because I was—I couldn't—I—" Tim still isn't sure why he didn't tell anyone then, except that maybe child-him hadn't realized how _wrong_ it all was. But he should have. He should have.

"Hey, no, calm down," Jason says, turning towards him, phone set aside and hands raised. "It's not your fault, what they did. You were just as much a victim as everyone else they killed or hurt over the years."

Tim shakes his head. "It's different. I was _right there_. I should have _done_ something."

"No, because—Wait. Is _that_ why you always leave when Dick comes into a room? Why you don't want him to know about you?"

Tim hunches his shoulders, ducks his head. It's bad enough that he has to exist knowing that he could have done something—he never wants Dick to know how he was too much of a coward to do anything. Never wants to see him disappointed, or worse, angry. "Please don't tell him?"

Jason stares at him, long and hard. Then sighs. "Fine. But only if you agree to stop blaming yourself for all this, 'cause it's _not_ your fault."

He opens his mouth to reply—and really, he does mean to, though he has no idea what he's planning to say since that simply isn't a promise he can make—only to be interrupted by the arrival of a stately black car. "Alfred's here," he says instead, hopping to his feet. "Let's go tell him how we did."

"Alright," Jason says, sounding more than a little reluctant. "Let's head home."

**Author's Note:**

> [I have a tumblr!](http://themandylion.tumblr.com/) Come visit if you want ridiculous AU headcanons, rants about the English language (and/or educational publishing), history fangirling, adorable baby bats, and veeeeery occasional fanart. Also, because I am an actual human being with opinions of my own, sometimes I post or reblog things that reflect those opinions. If you can't handle the idea of someone existing in the universe and possessing opinions which differ from your own, you probably should not click on that link.


End file.
